Why I Named My Blog The Nudibranch

How does one go about deciding on a blog name?  I posed this question to myself a couple weeks ago when I made the resolution to start blogging more.  Could I come up with a phrase that rings with candor and subtle symbolism?  Or would any such phrase sound obviously contrived?  Would it be more prudent to pick a word or phrase at random, and let its meaning and identity develop over time?

The latter logic did not occur to me the last time I confronted this task.  I am embarrassed to note that the previous name of this blog was “Of Passionate Proportions.”  Let it be known that: a) I was 18 when I chose it, b) I was suffering acutely from the requisite 18-year-old need to prove myself, and c) I had an obsession with alliteration (or should I say, an adoration of alliteration?  I suppose that hasn’t completely faded…).  Needless to say, upon revisiting my long-untouched Blogger, I knew I had to switch the name to something a little less… melodramatic.  (Understatement)

What about… an animal name?  I thought.  I majored in biology, after all.  I have an unreserved, nerdtastic, probably-unnerving-to-strangers love for all things living.  An animal name could be meaningful and yet unassuming, strong yet not overbearing.

But what animal?  Most already have myriad connotations attached to their names—associations with myth or masculinity or femininity or fiction… If I did choose an animal, it would have to be one that almost NO ONE really knows about...

And that’s when I thought of… the nudibranch. 

Allow me to explain my own awareness of this esoteric animal:

Last winter, in my senior year at UW, at the urging of my wonderful friend Olivia, I signed up for an Invertebrate Zoology class.  Initially, the thought of taking an entire course on the spineless creatures of our planet—worms, bugs, sponges and the like—seemed less than exciting.  However, after the first couple weeks of the class, I learned that invertebrates are quite possibly the most underrated group of living things on earth. 

There are invertebrates so ancient in origin, so outlandish in appearance, they don’t even seem to fit into the category “animal”; much closer, rather, to the classification “alien”.  There is a microscopic marine organism called the tardigrade that can freeze all of its metabolic processes when it encounters hostile environmental conditions—I’m talking Austin Powers The-Spy-Who-Shagged-Me-style—until it senses the coast is clear to come back to life.  There are jellyfish that can reverse their life cycle, going from their adult form back to their juvenile form, in effect making themselves nearly immortal.  There are so many strange and fascinating invertebrates in existence that given the knowledge and time, I could go on detailing them until the sea cows come home.  But there is one creature in particular that captured my heart, one alone I came to know intimately, appreciate immensely and revere almost religiously.  Olivia and I had to give a lecture on this organism as an assignment for our class, and thus got to spend many hours learning and taking delight in its quirks.  This invertebrate is, of course, the nudibranch. 

The nudibranch is a special group of—dramatic pause—sea slugs.  Yup.  It’s a slug.  Of the same phylogenetic class as those banana slugs we encounter so often in the Pacific Northwest and sometimes, with varying degrees of remorse, step on.  The nudibranch is so named for the unique finger-like appendages that project from its dorsal side (see below).  The numerous protuberances create a high surface area ideal for respiration (breathing).   For this reason, whatever biologist had the privilege of first discovering this sea slug gave it the Latin/Greek equivalent of the name “Naked Gills”—nudus being Latin for naked, and brankhia Greek for gills.

Naked gills.  Does that not accurately capture what one does when writing a blog—writing anything, really—and putting it out for the wide, weird interwebs to encounter and analyze?  Here, let me lay bare what I use to breathe; let me reveal the thoughts and machinery that keep me chugging à-la-Thomas-the-Tank-Engine; let me attempt to verbalize the musings that make up my mental panorama, amorphous and pale and vulnerable as they may be.

I haven’t even begun to touch on why the nudibranch itself is so darn awesome. First, let’s talk aesthetics.  These slugs take “colorful” to a whole new level.  They are an oceanic embodiment of fire and passion.  Fire once got jealous that it couldn’t hang out with Ocean, so it fashioned the nudibranch to be its official ambassador.  If Picasso had a brainchild with a marine biologist, it would be the nudibranch.  If Picasso had ever actually known about the existence of nudibranchs, he would have painted portraits of them that put Dora Maar's to shame.  In these slugs, one finds a testament to Mother Nature’s frivolity; an exhibition of her evolutionary creativity, child-like in its unfettered freedom, reminiscent of fairy tales in its juxtaposition of the beautiful and the bizarre.

You think all slugs are fragile and easily squished?  You don’t yet know the nudibranch.  It won’t go down without taking you with it.  You see, those finger-like appendages I mentioned?  They do more than just respiration.*  With these appendages, called cerata, nudibranchs give honey badgers a run for their money in terms of brute badassery.  Inside those cerata is a fearsome array of toxins and venomous barb-like cells called nematocysts.  But nudibranchs are not born with these defense mechanisms.  They HIJACK them.  That’s right.  Our innocent-looking sea slug friends actually feed on some of the most poisonous animals in the ocean, ingesting their prey’s chemical defenses and concentrating them inside their cerata, thus becoming even more poisonous than the deadly creatures they feast on.  One of my favorite examples is the glaucus atlanticus, a one-inch-long, electric blue little beastie that feeds on the Portuguese man-of-war (See below, and/or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glaucus_atlanticus for more info).

So.  I just happen to have an extremely personal connection with a little-known slug that is beautiful and strange and evocative and unexpectedly fierce.  I named my blog The Nudibranch not with the assertion that my writing IS all of these things, but rather so that I will always have something to hold in my mind and strive to emulate.

Also, sometimes I find myself bewildered by my own existence.  But then I think about the fact that this guy exists too:

…and I am humbled.  And amused.  And comforted.

*There are actually two different types of nudibranchs.  Only one type, the aeolids, have the finger-like cerata which are used for both respiration and protection.  The other type, dorids, have feathery, branch-like external gills, which only do respiration.  Both types of nudibranch hijack toxins from the things they eat; aeolids just store the toxins in their cerata, and dorids, as far as I understand, store them along their dorsal side, not in their protruding gills.  I figured this was too much detail to put in the main text, but might prove interesting for those I've converted to nudibranch-lovers =D